How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin: the full story
Part One · The Cake
Once upon a time, on an island by the shores of the Red Sea, there lived a Baker. From his hat the rays of the sun were reflected in more-than-oriental splendour. He lived by himself, with nothing but his hat and his knife and a cooking-stove of the kind you must never touch. One day he took flour and water and currants and plums and sugar. He made himself one cake. It was a very big cake, two feet across and three feet thick.
The Baker baked it and baked it till it was brown all over and smelled most sentimental. But just as he was going to eat it, there came down to the beach from the far inside of the island a Rhinoceros. He had a horn on his nose, two piggy eyes, and few manners. In those days the Rhinoceros's skin fitted him quite tight, with no wrinkles in it anywhere. He looked exactly like a Noah's Ark Rhinoceros, only much bigger.
He had no manners then, and he has none now. He never will have any. He said, "How!" and the Baker left his cake and climbed to the top of a palm tree, where he sat and watched with nothing on but his hat. The Rhinoceros upset the stove with his nose, and the cake rolled on the sand. He spiked that cake on the horn of his nose, and he ate it all up, every crumb.
Part Two · The Skin
Then he went away, waving his tail, into the wild inside of the island, where nobody ever goes. The Baker came down from his palm tree and set the stove back on its legs. Then he said a rhyme: "Them that takes cakes which the Baker-man bakes makes dreadful mistakes." And there was a great deal more in that than you would think. Five weeks later there was a heat wave in the Red Sea.
Everybody took off all the clothes they had. The Baker took off his hat. But the Rhinoceros took off his skin, and carried it over his shoulder as he came down to the beach to bathe. In those days it buttoned underneath with three buttons, and it looked like a raincoat. The Rhinoceros said nothing whatever about the Baker's cake, because he had eaten it all. He did not feel a bit sorry.
He waddled straight into the water, and blew bubbles through his nose, and left his skin on the beach. Presently the Baker came by and found it. He smiled a smile that ran all around his face twice. Then he danced three times round the skin, and rubbed his hands. He went to his camp and filled his hat with cake crumbs, for the Baker never ate anything but cake, and never swept out his camp.
Part Three · The Crumbs
He took that skin, and he shook that skin. He rubbed that skin as full of old, dry, stale, tickly cake crumbs and burnt currants as it could possibly hold. Then he climbed back up his palm tree and waited for the Rhinoceros to come out of the water. Out he came, and he buttoned up the skin with its three buttons, and at once it tickled like cake crumbs in bed. He wanted to scratch, but that made it worse.
He lay down on the sand and rolled and rolled and rolled, and every time he rolled, the crumbs tickled him worse and worse and worse. Then he ran to the palm tree and rubbed and rubbed and rubbed himself against it. He rubbed so much and so hard that he rubbed his skin into a great fold over his shoulders, and another fold underneath, where the buttons used to be. He rubbed off the buttons, too, and he rubbed some more folds over his legs.
It spoiled his temper, but it made no difference to the cake crumbs, which were still inside, and still tickled. So he went home, very angry and horribly scratchy. And from that day to this, every rhinoceros has great folds in his skin and a very bad temper, all on account of the cake crumbs inside. And the Baker came down from his palm tree, wearing his hat, packed up his stove, and went away to the far-off places he came from.